


And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon

by Mellow_Yellow



Series: Halloweener [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Family Secrets, Father-Daughter Relationships, Gen, Mother-son relationships, Vague references to domestic violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 12:03:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8206553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellow_Yellow/pseuds/Mellow_Yellow
Summary: “They said at school there’s a story about his house.”Lilith went still, guessing she already knew but hoping maybe she was wrong anyway. “About whose house?”“About Granddad’s house.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Today's spooktober prompt: family secrets.

Lucas and Simon were late getting out of soccer practice. It was the third time this week. Lilith checked the clock on the dash and exhaled sharply through her nose. It should have ended 20 minutes ago, she didn’t know what was going on in the coach’s head. It was a sixth-grade soccer league, not the damn Copa America.

She squinted, trying to make out the little players on the field in the distance. It was soupy out, just about to rain. She could barely see anything, let alone her own kids.

“Hey mom.” From the backseat, Ben had been patiently repeating himself for an indeterminate amount of time. The only reason Lilith looked behind her now was because he punctuated the “mom” with a soft kick of his sneaker against the back of her seat.

She turned around and looked at Ben. He grinned guiltily, part of a fruit snack stuck in his bottom front teeth. She made her eyes wide, giving him her full, undivided attention. “What’s up, little man?” 

He opened his mouth and closed it, a little breathless at the sudden attention. “So today we learned about space?”

“Wow. What’s going in space?”

“Did you know there’s black holes?”

“What about the black holes.”

“They eat the rest of space.”

It was a surprisingly accurate definition, Lilith thought, impressed. “Sounds like a big day.”

Ben nodded emphatically. Before he could go on about the wonders of space, the back car door was yanked open with exuberant force. 

“It’s not fair that we keep going on the same team,” Lucas was opining, mid-complaint as he slid into the car. He crawled over Ben’s car seat in the middle, flopping on the opposite side. 

Simon followed, dark curly head thumping against the headrest as he settled in. “It’s not like I want to keep playing with you either.”

“Soccer practice sounds like it was dramatic today,” Lilith said evenly. “Also, hello. Welcome to the car.”

“Hi, mom,” both boys intoned moodily.

Strategically, Lilith took two more fruit snack packs out of her cup holder and tossed them behind her. 

“Eat up,” she said. “Granddad’s holding dinner for us at his house.”

An instant whine rose up from the back seat in a warbling harmony. “I don’t want to go to Granddad’s!” 

“Settle down, peanut gallery,” Lilith muttered, distracted as she tried to pull out of the parking lot. The Jeep’s turning radius was weird, and just in time for the drive, the rain began to fall.

“Why can’t we just go home?” Simon groaned. “His house is the worst.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Lucas policed back immediately, as though he didn’t spend most of his kid life drawing every story out to its most dramatic zenith.

“Be quiet, Lucas," Simon snapped.

“Hey,” Lilith called out mildly, and then went in for the kill. “If you keep arguing we won’t get McDonald’s on our way home from Granddad’s.”

The backseat fell into a mutinous silence. She liked to think it wasn’t only the threat of leaving them to the mercies of her dad’s horrible cooking that made them pipe down. She deeply, genuinely hated when they argued, and they knew that. It hurt her heart. They knew that, too, and they were protective of her heart, too protective for two little preteens.

Lucas and Simon were eleven, twins, and moderately to severely precocious depending on the day. They’d been engaged since birth in the type of old-school rivalry that usually occurred between Italian restaurants situated across the street from each other, or coworkers that shared a cube. It was a constant, petty battle.

Ben, meanwhile, was seven, a sweet, distractible airhead who was usually focused on staying out of the middle of Lucas and Simon’s nonsense.

Individually, they were a lot to handle. Collectively, it felt like trying to corral three squalling cats into a single car seat for a trip to the vet.

Lilith took a deep, slow breath, held it in her diaphragm for a three-count, and exhaled through her nose. For time’s sake, she usually just went with “a lot." 

She checked the clock again, and winced. They were really behind schedule now, and with the rain it was going to take twice as long to get to her dad’s house on all those poorly paved back roads. 

“Shit,” she muttered.

“Mom!” Ben called out, scandalized.

“Sorry. Shoot." She took a breath, and pulled her phone out. “Quiet, guys, I need to call your Granddad.” 

Like someone had sucked the air out of the car, all three boys went mute. It made Lilith’s chest feel heavy. It wasn’t natural for them to be so quiet, not anymore, and she hated that now her own father was what was making them revert so quickly.

She put the phone on speaker so she could still drive safely in the rain. It rang once, then twice.

Her dad picked up on the third ring. She knew because he interrupted the ring, and there was the slight, mechanical non-sound of the call connecting. Beyond that he didn’t make a sound, waiting for her to grovel, presumably.

“Hey, Dad,” she said, trying to keep her voice breezy.

There was another pointed silence free of any recognizable return greeting, save for his familiar breathing pattern that sounded unfortunately like a growl.

In the backseat, the boys had all frozen further.

“Yeah, so,” she said after a beat, feeling harried and like she was in trouble already, “so I just got the twins from soccer practice and we’re on our way over now.”

“You’re late.” Her dad’s voice had always been harsh, but it was especially low and jagged when he was annoyed. 

Lilith eased up on the gas as the light ahead turned red. “I know, we’re running a little behind—” 

“Nearly an hour.”

“Yes, I know, I also have a clock, but Simon and Lucas had soccer practice,” she said, forgetting herself in her own rising irritation. 

“Don’t get smart with me.”

She could feel her face heat. It was like she could feel the boys watching her, eyes drinking in her every movement, taking her cue. She hated being scolded in front of her own kids, but she hated how anxious her own dad made her more, and how much it seemed to bleed into the kids.

“We’ll be there soon,” she said finally.

Her dad hung up without saying goodbye.

There was a ringing silence in the Jeep, the rain beating down on the roof the only sound.

She swallowed, her throat feeling thick. She waited until she was sure her voice would sound normal again, and then forced a slightly chipper note into her voice to ask, “So, I heard about black holes from Ben, what exciting stuff happened in the sixth grade today?” 

This was also part of their old pattern, forced cheerfulness, pretending everything was fine to cover up a sudden darkness, and Lilith disliked unearthing it, but it worked like flipping a switch. As one man, Simon and Lucas leaped valiantly at the offering to redirect.

“Lucas got into a fight at recess,” Simon tattled.

“Don’t, Simon!” Lucas shot back, outraged.

“What kind of fight?” Lilith asked reluctantly. She knew whatever had happened was probably nothing. The school would have called if it was, and besides, her boys weren’t like that. All of her sons were unusually (to Lilith, almost unbelievably) gentle, in ways that they really shouldn't be, considering how they grew up, considering the things they used to see. She felt duty-bound to check anyway. She used their old shorthand automatically. “A yelling fight or a hitting fight?”

“Just a yelling fight,” Lucas promised, and there was the sound of Lucas kicking at Simon, trying to get him to confirm, and Simon relented.

“Yeah, it was just a yelling fight.”

Simon and Lucas were sufficiently distracted, off on a tangent about how Lucas had managed to draw the ire of Christopher Jensen, current headman of the sixth grade. Lilith smiled, listening to the retelling, but when she glanced back, Ben was frowning. He looked troubled, kicking his little feet absently against the car seat. 

“What’s up, buddy?” she asked, interrupting the second act betrayal of Christopher Jensen refusing to share the basketball court sufficiently at recess. Simon trailed off, looking at his little brother.

There was a pause, the rain beating down a little heavier on the window. Lilith switched the window wipers into a higher gear. 

“Why is Granddad so mean to you?” Ben asked, little voice quavering just enough that Lilith felt instantly guilty. 

She reached an arm behind her, feeling blindly until she could grab his sneaker, squeezing his little toe through the shoe. It was a tough question, especially since she had never really figured out the answer to it either.

“He doesn’t mean to be,” she said, deflecting. “He’s just an old man. He’s grouchy.”

She would have winced at the lie had she been telling it to Lucas and Simon when they were Ben’s age, but she’d mellowed considerably on the honesty policy in the intervening years. Too much had happened. She felt hardened.

She was relatively confident, however, that when her dad was mean to her, he did it on purpose. Every time.

Simon made a thoughtful noise. “Grandpa Joseph isn’t grouchy.”

“Yeah,” Ben said, perking up, latching on to this flaw in Lilith’s logic, “Grandpa Joseph was really nice! He made us brownies that one time.”

“You’re right,” Lilith allowed. She noted the careful past tense. They hadn't seen their grandpa on their dad's side in over six  months. “He’s a good grandpa.” That was also true. She bit her lip at the unspoken implication that by comparison, her own dad was not, in fact, a good grandpa, but she didn’t correct herself.

The boys’ paternal grandparents had been the best, and only, gift their dad had ever given them. It was a shame they couldn’t see them anymore, but it couldn't be helped.

“I don’t like it when he’s mean to you,” Ben said after a thoughtful pause. "He's—I don't like when people are mean to you."

Lilith knew he didn't mean her dad, not really. But none of the boys every said the name "dad" anymore. His identity was implied plenty, like she was pretty sure Ben was doing right now, but never overtly mentioned. She was never sure if they'd formed some kind of little kid committee and made a resolution, or if it was just an unspoken agreement, but it was like his name had dropped from their vocabulary in less than a year. It wasn't like she ever referred to their dad much either, though, so maybe they were following her on this one.

“Me either,” Simon admitted. Lucas made an agreeing sound. 

“It’s okay, guys,” Lilith said, smiling tightly against her teeth. Her lip felt dangerously wobbly. She was dreading getting out of the car at her dad’s if she was already feeling this sensitive. “I can take care of myself.”

It was a conversation they’d had before, during a time that felt both surreally distant and too recent to think about without feeling cold. _It’s not the kids job to take care of the mom. It’s the mom’s job to take care of the kids._

She glanced in the rearview. None of the boys looked that convinced. Even Ben looked stubbornly protective, all two and a half feet of him.

“It’s okay,” she said again. “We’ll eat some dinner, we’ll see you granddad, we’ll get McDonald’s on our way back—that’s our family secret, remember—you’ll go to bed, it’ll be fine.” 

It felt like a weak argument. The closer they got to her dad’s house, the more Lilith was dreading it, and she knew the boys could feel it on her. They always could. 

But they were, at heart, troopers, and they didn’t argue more as they reached the outskirts of her dad’s neighborhood. It was a pretty little neighborhood, just on the outer edge of town, sprawling lawns, some bigger houses but mostly older gable front houses, some historic and as old as the town itself. Some of them even had legends surrounding them, although Lilith didn’t really like to think about them much. 

Demonstrating the strange telepathy that sometimes made it feel as though the boys were at least halfway in her head at all times, Ben made a little fitful sound behind her. 

“I don’t like those houses. They’re scary.”

“They’re okay, buddy. They’re just old,” Lilith tried to comfort him, but she had to agree. Some of the houses were falling apart, and looked like they hid secrets. She knew for a fact that a lot of them did. Her dad’s house was no different. It possibly looked worse than all the rest of them.

Then Ben said something that made her arm hair prickle lightly. “They said at school there’s a story about his house.”

When Ben said “school” he really meant preschool. Exercising what must have been monumental restraint, neither of his brothers corrected him and called it Not Real School. 

She pressed, hoping she was wrong. “About whose house?”

“About Granddad’s house.”

Lilith froze, hands jerking a little on the steering wheel. She considered her play. She couldn’t tell if it was worth it to play dumb. She was shaken that it was somehow little Ben who had come across the story, not Lucas or Simon, who had comparatively had much more time to encounter the unsavory legends about their grandfather, and in turn about their family, or at least about Lilith's family.

She kept her voice level when she echoed, “There’s a story about Granddad’s house? Who’s telling stories?”

“I heard some of the teachers talking about it,” Ben said innocently.

That made Lilith curse again, silently this time in deference to the little pitchers. Ben was so little, small for his age, and he’d learned how to be so quiet, quiet enough that he could hide in plain sight, scrunched up tight in on himself, listening to the adults around him yell and scream, often hit and knock things around, invisible until it was safe to come out again. He must have stayed awake during naptime, she reasoned. He'd always hated naptime. She wasn’t surprised a couple aides at preschool knew the stories; she was more than a little fucking pissed they talked so freely about it around the kids, even if they thought they were sleeping. 

She considered changing the subject, distracting them with a bribe, maybe McDonald’s tomorrow night too. It wasn’t a good story. But then, it was probably just a fluke that Ben had heard about it before his older brothers. It was unlikely they would go much longer without stumbling upon some version of the tale themselves. Maybe it was better to do it like a bandaid. This way she would be with them, could control the narrative. Maybe it was time to start telling them more about their granddad, even the bad stuff. Especially the bad stuff. It might help him make sense to them, to their little kid brains.

Besides, the boys had always responded well to tales of caution, taking them as facts of life and survival. _Don’t touch that_ , or _be quiet in your rooms tonight_ , or _don’t come downstairs while your dad’s home._ Maybe they would take this similarly in stride.

“What story, Mom?” Lucas asked hesitantly.

Simon jumped on, sounding curious but also a little unsure. Almost nervous. “There’s a story about Granddad’s house?”

“It’s more like a legend,” Lilith hedged, because that was true. There was no real proof. Her dad wasn’t sloppy like that. Any stories that went around town were just that, stories. There was a kind of security in the ambiguity, which Lilith often clung to for her own sanity. It was a skill she hoped the boys would cultivate on their own, too.

“Well, Ben,” she said after a moment, feeling resigned and also tired, “you want to tell your brothers?” 

Looking momentarily overwhelmed at the responsibility, Ben took a breath like he was about to dive underwater, and closed his eyes. When he spoke, he sounded like he was reciting something from wobbly memory.

“The legend goes, um, that at Granddad’s house, some teenagers came in one night a long time ago and were looking around, and then, and then, um—he got mad at them?” Ben cracked an eye open, looked at Lilith, who was watching him carefully as they coasted to a stop a few houses up from her dad's. She shrugged, urging him on.

Maybe it made her a bad mom, but whatever. They’d been through more as a family. The boys deserved to know there was a story about their Granddad, even if it was a gruesome one. They could handle it.

Ben continued: “So teenagers were walking around, and Granddad found them, and then—” he paused, like he was searching for the correct word, casting through his memory, and then with a triumphant hum, he finished on a flourish, “—and _according to legend_ ,” he paused, relishing the attention of his brothers, who were hanging on every word, as he waggled his eyebrows, which were surprisingly bushy for a little kid, “Granddad buried them under his house.” 

Nothing but silence met this grand finale. The twins took a moment to process it. Lilith pulled up to the curb outside her dad’s house. Even from the street, it looked like a rundown old shithole. It _definitely_ looked like the kind of place that had bodies buried someplace nearby, if you believed in that sort of thing. But then, legends weren’t everything. Sometimes they undersold the true magnitude of whatever horrors really lurked beneath.

Finally, Simon crossed his arms, unimpressed. “Well, it sounds like they were trespassing.”

Lucas threw his hands in the air. “Yeah, but Granddad killed them.”

“Allegedly,” Simon said on a sniff. Lilith had no idea where he had learned that word, but she had to stop herself from snorting in the front seat, transforming it into a thoughtful cough at the last second. 

“What, are you Granddad’s lawyer now?”

“Society has rules, you can’t just help yourself inside some stranger’s house!” 

“One of those rules is _don’t murder_ , I mean, not all crime is the same.” 

Ben watched them snipe back and forth, and when they seemed to settle, he added gingerly, “So, yeah. That’s the story, I guess.” 

“Mom, is that true?” Simon and Lucas asked in indignant near-unison.

“Well, that’s the legend.” She shrugged. Oddly, hearing the legend from another angle, even from her own baby, had calmed her down. Her dad made her nervous most of the time, but that was just because of what he was capable of. And even that had been for her benefit, in the end. It was a good reminder, that he did what needed to be done, and he'd unpredictably been the only person who was there for Lilith when she'd done the same.

Lucas gave a theatrical huff, like he’d put the story through the old mind sieve and come up wanting. “No way. There’s no way that’s true.” He huffed again, sounding strangled. “Granddad hasn’t _killed_ anyone, _god_ , Simon.” 

Ben looked quickly up into the rearview, meeting Lilith’s eye for confirmation. She wrinkled her nose at him, and his slightly apprehensive frown melted into a smirk.

“That we know of,” Simon retorted, probably just to argue at this point.

“Mom would know. She’s known him forever.”

All three dark eyes met hers in the rearview now. She took her time thinking it over, letting the anticipation hang in the air.

“Well,” she said finally, grinning a little to try and lighten the mood, somewhat fruitlessly, “can you ever really know another person?” Seeing the boys wide eyes, she dialed it back, putting on her Serious Mom Face. “The point is, no matter how grouchy your Granddad can be, he would do a lot to protect what’s his. He would do a lot to protect you guys, because you’re his grandkids.”

The boys still looked dubious. To their credit, the words felt trite on her lips too. But they were at the house now, and it would only make the evening tenser to drag it and arrive even later than they already were. No sense dragging it out.

Maybe they would take the moral to heart, and trust the granddad in the same larger-than-life way Lilith had come to depend on him, when things were at their worst. Maybe that was a stretch. But then, who knew what kids absorbed, really. 

She knew that the specter of that legend is why she'd come to her dad for help when she didn't know what else to do, so in the end, the legend had served its purpose well enough.

Glancing out the window where the rain had largely dried to a heavy fog, she gazed for a second at the moon coming out to cast a silver haze in the air. It was eerie, but a little beautiful, too. A little damp fog also beat the hell out of dragging three soaked kids all the way up the driveway.

“Okey dokey, everybody out. Ben, hang tight, I’m coming for you.” She turned her head to undo her seat belt then opened her door without turning all the way around, so when she got out, she practically barreled into a solid form.

“Dad!” she yelped out. She scrambled back, knocking into the car door. In the backseat, the boys made a mumbled yeep sound, then went quiet again, once again through force of habit, she supposed. “Dad.” She swallowed, straightening up. “Man, you move like a ninja.”

“No, you’re just oblivious,” he said dryly, dismissively. Familiar. Almost comforting, really. He looked past her at the boys. “Hello.” 

In person, it was easier to remember that while he was a force, he was still a man. He was never as tall and looming as she remembered. His voice could still cut glass, but it was never as forbidding as she recalled. He was still slightly unsettling, but face-to-face, she noticed the deep wrinkles on his forehead, and how he stooped more now than he ever did before. He looked human. Human, and older, too, which was comforting, somehow. To know that he aged the same as everyone else.

She glanced past him at the flowerbeds. “Garden’s looking good, Dad.” It was code, in a sense. A request for détente. In response, he stepped back, giving her space to open the back seat and start hauling the boys out, who had all suspiciously forgotten how to climb out on their own and instead waited until she placed them on the sidewalk beside her. They huddled in her shadow, looking up at their Granddad with a new tension, but also curiosity. They definitely weren’t comfortable with him, but compared to their own dad, he wasn’t nearly as scary. 

She scooped Ben up onto her hip, letting him cuddle into her shoulder as they started up the lawn. “What’s for dinner?” she asked her dad. 

“Casserole,” he intoned.

Just behind them, Simon and Lucas attempted to withhold their groans. To her surprise, Lilith saw the corner of her dad’s mouth quirk, like he had heard the intake of breath was pretending not to have noticed. 

The house inside was like stepping into another world. It felt like it belonged to another time, to a different person.

"No shoes inside," her dad barked, making all four of them jump. 

Some things would never change, though. Lilith refrained from rolling her eyes, attempting to keep the peace, and crouched to take the boys' shoes off.

Coming back to this house was as clear a reminder as any that she never had been, and never would be, close with her dad. He yelled too much when she was little, and eventually her mom had decided she’d rather not spend her nights listening to her husband’s voice ricochet off the walls like a bear’s roar. When her mom had died when Lilith was seventeen, she’d felt completely alone, at the mercy of a cold, calculating monster.

The bleakness had faded to more of a dull acceptance after a while. Her dad was all she had left, god have mercy on her soul.

He’d never liked her friends, or her clothes, or the way she talked, or noticed if she worked at school, or when she started to fail. He’d called her fat when she’d been merely chubby in middle school, and called her mean names when she dated in middle school. He’d made weird, self-deprecating comments about Catholics and birth control when she’d had the twins six months after getting married. He’d never made an effort to get to know the boys. 

He’d also never approved of Martin, but Lilith supposed he’d gotten the ultimate last laugh there.

Even when she had come to him in the ultimate moment of crisis, begging for help that he had stepped in and provided without hesitation or protest, it hadn’t brought them any closer. 

Instead, she just forced herself to come visit more regularly, dragging the boys along like some kind of pilgrimage she didn’t really understand. A dance of penance she thought she owed him, and that they were both stuck awkwardly stumbling along to, too stubborn to back down. 

They walked into the kitchen, where a casserole indeed lay limply on the table. It looked like it had had time to cool, congealing into an even less appealing texture. 

The boys sat on the same side of the table, her dad taking the one empty seat across, leaving the table lopsided. Her dad raised an eyebrow pointedly but didn’t comment. Lilith didn’t have it in her to tell the boys to relocate as they flanked her, shoulders pressed to her arms.

They tucked into the casserole, which was just as gross as it looked. Lilith tried to set a good example, gulping it down without wincing too much. The boys followed her lead, although Ben spent more time messing around with his fork than actually eating. She couldn’t really blame him; he was only four, and the food was legitimately disgusting. 

Dinner was quiet, as usual. The only time dinner wasn’t quiet growing up was when they’d been fighting, and she’d had enough of fighting to last her the rest of her life. Absently, she pulled Ben close to ruffle his hair, and ignored her dad’s disapproving glare, looking past his shoulder at the garden, mind drifting. 

She could never figure out for sure how he’d gotten Martin’s long, lanky body to fit into the small space beneath the tool shed out there. She also had never asked, because she didn’t want to really contemplate the image of her own father silently, doggedly sawing at a dead body’s limbs to fold it together to be stuffed into the mulch under the floorboards. She also had a feeling it might be the source of his ever-blossoming garden out front, but again: don't ask if you don't want to know.

And she'd never really wanted to know. When she’d shown up in the middle of the night last year, she just wanted help. She didn’t care how he got it done. 

She’d picked up the boys from Martin’s parents' house, and they’d obliviously asked her to get Martin to call them when he got back from his work trip. She’d nodded, trying not to act too sweaty and guilty. She'd made sure to put piles of blankets in the hatchback as camoflauge.

The boys had slept through the whole drive to her dad’s house. The Subaru she’d been driving at the time had been silent, almost tomblike, which was fitting. The boys remained asleep when she pulled up, her dad waiting for her on the driveway.

“Where is he?” he’d asked shortly.

“In the back,” she’d whispered. Her voice had sounded all weird and gulpy.

“Pull into the garage.”

She’d taken the boys inside, one by one, setting them asleep upstairs. She never saw the Subaru after that night. She bought the Jeep, and she began the quiet rumor that Martin had run off with one of his many girlfriends. His parents had always been suspicious, but Lilith had no longer felt obligated to bring the boys around. 

One grandparent was enough now. He would never make the boys brownies, but Lilith would rather have a fiend who was willing to hide a body for her than another useless bully without any worthwhile function, even if it was a dark one. 

She blinked back to the table in front of her. Beside her, Lucas had finished half his casserole and was gamely trying to choke down the rest. Simon looked on the verge of rebellion. He stared down mutinously at his largely untouched food, then up at Lilith. Lilith smiled a little, reaching to nudge him. Simon rolled his eyes, but pressed his shoulder back into hers. In her lap, Ben was drooping, his dark head nodding against her collarbone. She looked past him at her dad. 

When he saw Lilith watching, his thin, cruel lips fleetingly softened into a thin, ephemeral smirk. Nothing so emotive as a smile, or a grin, perish the thought. But at least for a second, his harsh face moderately relaxed.

"Pass the casserole," she told him. He looked surprised, then rolled his eyes as she smiled, gesturing for the spoon to get another square of the disgusting casserole. She liked to think he knew what she was trying to say. 

"Mom, seriously?" Simon said under his breath, grossed out at even the thought of more casserole.

She kissed him on the crown of his head. "Hush." She jostled Ben lightly in her lap. "So Ben learned about black holes today. You want to hear about black holes, Dad?"

Her dad made a noncomittal noise, because she guessed he really didn't give a shit about black holes, but he didn't actively protest, so she took it as tacit consent. After a moment, Ben roused himself.

"Well," he said hesitantly. He looked at his older brothers for support, and they both shrugged. Lilith wanted to cuddle them too, but resisted with effort. "They, um. They eat the rest of outer space?"

The statement seemed to give her dad pause. His mouth turned down as he considered, and then, a greater miracle perhaps than even a black hole, he nodded in agreement. "I guess that is what they do."

Lilith tried to hide her deep surprise, and kept her eyes on her dad, watching him improbably but gamely listen to Ben's wobbly explanation of space. Her dad was scowling now, but she allowed herself, momentarily, sentimentally, to think that maybe that was just his face. Maybe he was just thinking about black holes. Maybe that was just his face in repose.

She knew he was still a monster, and he still scared her. But she’d chosen him as her monster, for now.

Briefly, she entertained the fancy that maybe her boys would tell a legend about her one day. That she could become their monster eventually. She supposed there were worst things to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for everyone who's taking the time to give some of these stories a whirl. I'm enjoying writing them, even if I'm kind of spooking myself out. Whatev, worth it. :) There's a bit of a theme emerging here, and I'm kind of liking it. I'll probably talk more about it on the ol' side blog, spit some words into the void, you know how it is: [gblfiction.tumblr.com](http://gblfiction.tumblr.com/)


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